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Nona Balakian was an editor at The New York Times Book Review who joined its staff in the 1940s, after studying with the legendary modernist literary critic Lionel Trilling at Columbia University. She was one of the founders of the National Book Critics Circle, which, following her death in 1991, created the annual citation for excellence in reviewing named in her honor.

In this space last Friday, Anthony Carnevale strongly and lengthily argued that “college is still worth it.” He implicitly criticized those, including me, who rely on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data showing that the number of college graduates exceeds the number of available jobs that require a college degree.